Hymnals iOS and Android App

GIA Publications, Inc. is a leader in sacred music and music education resources. Since 2013, we have worked with GIA to build an maintain mobile applications for both Apple iOS and Google Android. In the past, church musicians, choir singers and people singing from the pews used printed hymnals or large printed instrumental books to perform music for church worship. The Hymnals app displays the same music from the hymnals into a much more portable size of the tablet computer, while adding new features not available in printed books.

Purchase Hymnals and Music Books with In-App Purchase

Users can choose from a variety of hymnals and music books including instrument versions to purchase within the app. Using the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store accounts, users can immediately purchase the desired hymnal and download to their tablet.

Easily Navigate the Book

The app offers several ways to browse the hymnal or music book. Users may tap on the right side of the page to turn forward a hymn or piece of music, left side to navigate back, then swipe up or down to navigate within a piece of music. For instrumentalists, the app also works with popular bluetooth pedals, such as the AirTurn or PageFlip.

Finding Music Titles is Easy

There are two ways to find music within the app. Using the fuzzy search feature, users can search for a song by title keywords. If the user knows the hymn number, then they can use the “dail-a -hymn”. Just enter the hymn or psalm number and hit the “Go” button.

Organize Titles by Service Lists

During a worship service, it’s a pain to have to search through a book for a particular piece of music. Using the Hymnals App, users can organize titles into “Service Lists”. Then the user can page through only the pieces of music in the order of the worship service. A service list can also be emailed to other users of the Hymnals App.

Annotation

Many church musicians like to make notes on their music. Since it’s not a good idea to write on the tablet’s screen, we added the ability to annotate within the app. GIA licensed the Branchfire PDF library for the iOS and FoxIt PDF library for the Android version of the app. Using the annotation tools, users can type, draw, or make notes on the page.

Import from Dropbox

Church musicians and choirs often use pieces of music that are not part of a hymnal of music book variable within the app. Using the Dropbox API, users can connect to their Dropbox accounts to import PDF documents to be used within the Hymnals app.